Performativity
       

Stand on the widow's walk and watch the ships come in

Wait for you around every corner and boo-ya

Eat poison candy and barf a debutante barf

Wear my girl gang jacket in the style of Kris Kross

Dye dye dye my hair the color of my bleeding heart

Be the bedazzled bully on your block

The giffy troll in your comments feed

Put a hex on your IP address

Teach a class in black magic at a for-profit university

Play a teenage witch at an open mic back home

Play myself / with my real heart pinned on

Bad bad bad as I never was

And when the last sad song plays through my head

I'll be crying

I'm melting, I'm melting!

Swimming in a sea of so long

And you'll be feeling all my feelings

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Copyright © 2020 Becca Klaver All rights reserved
from Ready for the World
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission